I am your typical housewife living in high maintenance suburbia. I have a handsome husband, 2 kids and a flock of pet chickens. I try and feed my family with $100 a month. With the help of coupons, gardening and bartering I am able to squeeze the most out of our grocery budget and still manage to have a little fun along the way.

Weekly Grocery Shopping Savings Show and Tell {Week 49 of 52}

The links in the post below may be affiliate links. Read the full disclosureBy Mavis Butterfield on December 7, 2015 · 14 Comments

Fred Meyer $7.71

I am totally kicking myself for not loading the free bottle of Welch’s Juice I highlighted on friday on to my Fred Meyer card {you can only load that weeks freebie coupon on friday!} I was so excited about telling you about it I forgot to load it to myself. Bummer.

Last week I picked up a freebie package of Airhead {gross} thanks to the Friday freebie. Those will be going in Monkey Boy’s stocking this year. I also picked up milk @ $0.99 per half gallon, $0.99 marshmallows for the cranberry salad I’ll be making for Christmas, garlic 3 for $1, and 2 avocados @ $0.88 each.

I decided something last week. I am going to try and finish the year under $1800 for my grocery spending {which works out to be around $150 a month}. Next year I’m really going to try to get back to my penny pinching ways and get our grocery budget back to $100 a month. I think it’s going to be super hard now that the whole extreme couponing craze is over and food prices are rising. But I’m hopeful I can do it if I really buckle down.

Local Produce Stand $2.71

Peppers 2 for $1 and Hot House tomatoes $0.99 a pound.

Fred Meyer $1.12

I asked the HH to pick up a small piece of fresh ginger {I only needed 1 tablespoon} and this is what he came home with. Poor Lucy, she thought the HH bought her a new toy.

Fact: Dogs like frosting and they are really good at photobombing pictures.

Some of the meals we ate last week:

Waffles. I LOVE making breakfast for dinner and waffles are one of my favorite meals on the planet. Especially with a little homemade jam spread on top.

I was craving a cup of hot cocoa so I whipped up a batch ofhomemade hot cocoa mix. I’m pretty sure The Girl will polish this off in a week or so when she comes home for winter break.

I also made a batch ofChocolate Chip Brownies. I thought I was being clever when I cut up the brownies, individually wrapped them and then popped them in the freezer so I wouldn’t eat so many of them this time around. Turns out I like frozen brownies. 😉 Who knew?

The worst picture of pot roast, rice and roasted vegetables on the planet.

Homemade chicken and rice soup.

Handmade soft tacos withhomemade tortillas. Seriously.Stop buying tortillas from the grocery store. You can make your own {8 of them} for about $0.25 and they taste sooooo much better.

And if you don’t use all the tortillas at dinnertime, reheat them the next day and make breakfast tacos with eggs, fried potatoes, peppers and avocado.

Did you get a $10 off a $10 JCP coupon in the mail? I did. I can’t decided if I should get the HH another set of socks for Christmas or a scarf for myself.

If you really like ginger, you can peel and chop it and place in a small jar, cover with sherry (not cooking sherry, vile stuff) and it will last a long time in the fridge. Then, if making a stir fry, you have ginger already prepared. The ginger infused sherry is also a nice addition to a stir-fry sauce.

I do the same with ginger! Only I don’t bother to peel it before freezing as I find that using a microplane filters it out. Fresh ginger in a hot cup of water with some lemon and stevia in the morning is about the nicest cup of liquid ever.

You as usual did so much better than I did- my daughter and I went to Winco and Trader Joes yesterday and spent a fortune compared to what you spent- but for us, we didn’t do too bad. The only thing is- Trader Joe’s is full of wonderful fun Christmas things right now and we are suckers for that- we got a package of 12 caramels for $5.99- it comes in a long box and you are supposed to cut the caramels into small pieces and then do a taste test to guess what flavor each is- and write them on pieces of paper and compare how you did. I am counting that as a fun holiday game- not food-we did it last night. Watching my daughter dancing around the kitchen making grotesque faces when she didn’t like the flavor (the ginger, the strawberry black pepper, and the hot chili) was priceless…
Jingle Jangle mix in a tin from Trader Joe’s is deliciously fabulous- my daughter wants to marry it and the tiny peppermint bark waffle cookies…heavenly- I love holiday flavors….

That giant mutant ginger is hilarious! My husband would have come back with a commercial sized container of ground ginger or pickled ginger and a 48 pack of toilet paper. He means well but seems to think buying in bulk is always a good idea and he isn’t a cook. 🙂

How much do you think you (yearly/monthly) average would change if you had to count what you spend on meat? I think I read that your zaycon stuff is sponsored. I was just curious. Great job keeping costs down anyway!!